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Tag: Rial

With the announcement on Saturday night that Iran and the P5+1 group reached a tentative deal over the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranian rial appreciated 3.45% against the dollar on the black market. The rial jumped from 30000 IRR/USD on Saturday November 23rd to 29000 IRR/USD on Sunday November 24th. A daily appreciation of this magnitude is rare. In fact, it has occurred fewer than ten times since the beginning of 2013. Indeed, this indicates that the diplomatic breakthrough is having a positive effect on Iranian expectations.

Over a year ago, I uncovered the fact that Iran experienced a period of hyperinflation (in early October 2012), when its monthly inflation rate peaked at 62%. Since then, I have been actively monitoring and reporting on the IRR/USD black market exchange rates and calculating implied inflation rates for the country.

Since Hassan Rouhani took office, on August 3rd, Iranian expectations about the economy have turned less negative. Thus far, it appears Rouhani has been successful in ending the long period of economic volatility that has plagued Iran, since the US imposed sanctions in 2010. This has been reflected in the black-market IRR/USD exchange rate, which

There are three main factors at work here. The first is a concerted effort by the Rouhani administration and the central bank to curb Iran’s inflation. This stands in stark contrast to the previous regime, whose strategy was to simply deny that inflation was a problem.

The third factor in the rial’s recent stability is an improvement in Iranian economic expectations. This is where the P5+1 talks come into play. Iranians recognized that easing of the sanctions regime would be a bargaining chip in any nuclear negotiations. In consequence, their economic expectations improved as the talks progressed. Indeed, Saturday’s announcement gave these expectations a shot in the arm.

In light of the rial’s recent stability, I have delisted the rial from my list of “Troubled Currencies,” as tracked by the Troubled Currencies Project. For starters, the rial no longer appears to be in trouble. And, on a technical note, implied inflation calculations are less reliable during sustained periods of exchange rate stability.

That said, we must continue to pay the most careful and anxious attention to the black-market IRR/USD exchange rate in the coming months. Like the P5+1 agreement, Rouhani’s economic progress in Iran is tentative and likely quite fragile. Since the black-market IRR/USD is one of the only objective prices in the Iranian economy – and perhaps the most important one of all – it will continue to serve as an important weather vane, as the diplomatic process continues, and as Iran’s economy gradually moves into a post-sanctions era.

The Mehr News Agency is now reporting that Iran’s annual inflation rate has reached 31.5%. According to the Central Bank’s official line, Iran’s annual inflation rate has bumped up only 1.3 percentage points from February to March.

Never mind that this official inflation statistic is well below all serious estimates of Iran’s inflation. And yes, Iran’s official inflation statistics are also contradicted by the overwhelming body of anecdotal reports in the financial press.

When we do so, a much different picture of Iran’s inflation emerges. Indeed, Iran’s annual inflation rate is actually 82.5% – a rate more than double the official rate of 31.5% (see the accompanying chart).

As I have documented, regimes in countries undergoing severe inflation have a long history of hiding the true extent of their inflationary woes. In many cases, the regimes resort to underreporting or simply fabricating statistics to hide their economic problems. And, in some cases, such as Zimbabwe and North Korea, the government simply stops reporting economic data altogether.

Iran has followed a familiar path, failing to report inflation data in a timely and replicable manner. Those data that are reported by Iran’s Central Bank tend to possess what I’ve described as an “Alice in Wonderland” quality and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Since the start of the new year (on the Gregorian calendar), the rial has displayed new-found weakness. Indeed, its value reached an all-time low of 38,450 rials to one dollar, on Saturday, February 2. As the accompanying chart shows, it is now trading at 38,250, moving the implied annual inflation rate to 121%, from its year-end value of 110%.

How can the IRR/USD rate be so volatile? After all, both the rial and the dollar represent nothing more than fiat currencies, without any defined value. At the end of the day, the value of a fiat currency is whatever value that fluctuations in the supply of and demand for cash balances accord to a scruffy piece of paper.

The markets for both the rial and dollar respond to conjectures about the ability of the respective governments to deliver on their stated “good” intentions. When it comes to Iran, these conjectures understandably generate sharp fluctuations in the value of the rial. Indeed, it is clear that Iranians do not trust their government to deliver economic stability. In consequence, the rial continues to tumble with increasing volatility, and inflationary pressures continue to mount.

What has puzzled me for the past few months is why Prof. Salehi-Isfahani has been so hell-bent on denying Iran’s inflation problems. But finally, in his most recent article in Al Monitor, he showed his hand, revealing his underlying thesis – the same claim propagated by the Iranian regime – that the sanctions imposed by the West have not inflicted economic damage on Iran to the extent that has been reported.

In his most recent blog, Prof. Salehi-Isfahani finally abandons his own confused attempts to calculate Iran’s inflation rate. For his readers, this is a relief, as the variety of methods with which he attempted to calculate inflation in Iran amount to nonsense – and not even good nonsense.

On September 24th, the Iranian government announced that it would adopt a three-tiered, multiple-exchange-rate regime. This wrong-headed attempt to exert more control over the price of domestic goods and combat inflation has failed (and will continue to fail). Since the rial began its free-fall in early September, international observers and the Iranian people have struggled to understand the implications of this exchange-rate regime.

Iran has a history of implementing a variety of multiple-exchange-rate regimes – with mixed results, to say the least. Indeed, at its peak of currency confusion, the Iranian government set seven different official exchange rates. As the accompanying chart illustrates, the story of Iran’s hyperinflation has been one of divergence between the official and black-market (read: free-market) exchange rates.

This divergence is a product of the declining value of the rial – freely traded on the black market. In consequence, prices are rising dramatically in Iran – by almost 70% per month, according to my estimates. That said, in order to make sense of this phenomenon, it is necessary to understand the system whose failure we are witnessing.

The Iranian government (read: police) has recently cracked down on currency traders and has also censored websites that report black-market IRR/USD exchange rates.

This complex currency system results in lying prices that distort economic activity. By offering different exchange rates for different types of imports, the Iranian government is, in effect, subsidizing certain goods – distorting their true price. In consequence, any fluctuations in the black-market exchange rate – and, accordingly, in the price level – will be amplified to different degrees for different goods. The end result for Iranian consumers is confusion and mistrust, which, as we have seen, are feeding the panic that has been driving the collapse of the rial and Iran’s hyperinflation.

In recent days, Iranians have taken to the streets in protest over the collapse of the rial. In response, the Iranian government has cracked down on the protestors and shuttered Tehran’s foreign-exchange black market. Moreover, it has effectively cut off the supply of reliable economic information. Indeed, the signal-to-noise ratio in the Iranian economic sphere, which is normally quite low, is now even lower than usual.

To address this, I have prepared a fact sheet of the top 10 things you should know about Iran’s hyperinflation.

Since the U.S. and E.U. first enacted sanctions against Iran, in 2010, the value of the Iranian rial (IRR) has plummeted, imposing untold misery on the Iranian people. When a currency collapses, you can be certain that other economic metrics are moving in a negative direction, too. Indeed, using new data from Iran’s foreign-exchange black market, I estimate that Iran’s monthly inflation rate has reached 69.6%. With a monthly inflation rate this high (over 50%), Iran is undoubtedly experiencing hyperinflation.

When President Obama signed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, in July 2010, the official Iranian rial-U.S. dollar exchange rate was very close to the black-market rate. But, as the accompanying chart shows, the official and black-market rates have increasingly diverged since July 2010. This decline began to accelerate last month, when Iranians witnessed a dramatic 9.65% drop in the value of the rial, over the course of a single weekend (8-10 September 2012). The free-fall has continued since then. On 2 October 2012, the black-market exchange rate reached 35,000 IRR/USD – a rate which reflects a 65% decline in the rial, relative to the U.S. dollar.

The rial’s death spiral is wiping out the currency’s purchasing power. In consequence, Iran is now experiencing a devastating increase in prices – hyperinflation. As Nicholas Krus and I document in our recent Cato Working Paper, World Hyperinflations, there have been 57 documented cases of hyperinflation in history, the most recent of which was North Korea’s 2009-11 hyperinflation. That said, North Korea’s hyperinflation did not come close to the magnitudes reached in the recent, second-highest hyperinflation in the world, that of Zimbabwe, in 2008, nor has Iran’s hyperinflation – at least not yet.